What’s the best way to get more interactions from your customers? It’s a tough question for a big business, even harder for a small one. Do you stick to the competitive world of social media? Or do turn your attention to using tried and tested email marketing?

It might seem old fashioned, but email marketing is as relevant now as it has ever been. For all its modern advantages, social media continually falls short on conversions compared to the output of email, specifically against businesses using an email mailing list and professional email hosting.

It’s not hard to see why business mailing lists can be so effective. They allow you to build a much closer relationship with your customers, providing better overall retention and forming a core pillar of your marketing strategy. They’re a particularly powerful tool when used with older generations and people who don’t use social media very much.

If you’ve no idea where to start when it comes to building your business mailing list, don't panic. We’ll look at ‘what is a mailing list?’ and explain how to create a mailing list of your own in no time at all.

What is a mailing list?

Despite the intimidating prospect of stepping into email marketing, a business mailing list is an incredibly simple idea to wrap your head around.

An mailing list is essentially a list of emails a business or individual has collected. These have been gathered with the permission of the email’s owner, usually from visitors and customers who use your website. People will normally provide you with their email address to:

  • Subscribe to your blog
  • Get free downloadable content
  • Receive offers
  • Follow business updates
  • Sign up to purchase an item

This lets you use your email mailing list to deliver bulk offers, discounts, and follow-ups to your customers, encouraging them to make further purchases.

But be sure you keep up with GDPR laws and only contact users for the purposes they've given permission for.

Why do email mailing lists work so well?

Despite the increasing focus on influencer marketing in the social media era, sometimes the traditional methods are still the best. In fact, four out of five marketers say they would rather give up social media than email marketing, and it’s easy to see why when you consider that email marketing has an average click-through rate of 3.57% compared to Facebook’s 0.07% and Twitter/X’s 0.03%. Even though social media is more ‘out there’, there are a few key reasons as to why email mailing lists typically outperform social media platforms in terms of conversions. 

To start with, it’s a lot more personal. When was the last time you saw a social media ad that was specifically directed at you and used your name? Personalised marketing continuously proves to be more efficient, showing people are far more likely to interact with a more tailored experience.

This personalised element also comes with other benefits. It allows you to be purposeful in your message and design emails for different target audiences, ensuring you get a higher open rate and a potential increase in conversions.

Plus, if someone is visiting your website for the first time, it’s much easier to convince them to sign up to a mailing list for free rather than make a purchase straight away. And if you add various incentives to signing up, such as free eBooks, personalised offers, early access to sales, and new customer discounts, people will be even more likely to give you their details.

How to create a mailing list

However, before you can get all of these amazing benefits from email marketing, you need to know how to set up your business mailing list. Understanding how to create an email mailing list is a must for anyone who wants to get the most out of their customer base, and knowing how to create a mailing list will put you way ahead of the competition.

Much like the answer to 'what is a mailing list?', the steps you need to follow to create an email mailing list are also incredibly straightforward.

1. Have a website

First off, you’ll need to set up a website if you haven’t already. Websites are a must-have aspect of any business, no matter its size. If you find you’re in need of a website, check out our piece on the best website builders currently out there – they'll have you up and running in no time.

In addition to getting the tools you need to build your website, you need a way to actually host this website online and make it accessible to users on the internet. To host your website’s files, you need a Web Hosting plan from a reputable hosting provider like Fasthosts. We offer a wide range of web hosting plans to suit all kinds of budgets, websites and resource needs, from cheap web hosting options like shared hosting to high-end options like dedicated hosting, which is perfect for hosting high-traffic ecommerce websites or for hosting multiple sites.

2. Use an email marketing tool

Once your website is up and running, you’ll need to sign up with an email marketing service. There are many popular email marketing services like MailChimp or ConvertKit. Using one of these will make the management of your mailing list a lot easier, as well as help with the execution of bulk emails, and ensure you’re not accidentally breaking any email laws.

If you opt for a WordPress site, there are also loads of email marketing plugins that you can use to manage your email mailing list alongside your website. For example, MailPoet is an email marketing and newsletter management plugin that’s free to install. This plugin adds an integrated newsletter builder to your WordPress dashboard, so you can easily create and schedule newsletter emails from scratch or by using the available templates. Plus, you can set up automated emails to make it easier than ever to stay in touch with your audience, such as automated welcome emails and automated notification emails.

3. Get a professional email address

You'll also want to consider using your own domain name in your email address so your emails always look professional. While a generic Gmail or Hotmail email address is perfectly fine for personal correspondence, it can start to look a bit unprofessional or even untrustworthy when you use it in a business setting. Using your actual business domain instead of something like ‘@gmail.com’ will show customers that your emails are legitimate, leading to a better brand reputation and an increased click-through rate. 

Plus, with a professional business email account, you’ll be able to organise your email correspondence to improve brand image and email management even further. For example, marketing promotions could be sent by a ‘marketing@yourbusinessdomain.com’ email subdomain, and customers could be directed to a dedicated support subdomain like ‘support@yourbusinessdomain.com’ to better organise customer support issues.

It’s very simple to set yourself up with any email hosting service that will give you your own professional email address with your business/website name as the domain, plus the option to create additional email subdomains to simplify email management. We offer Email Hosting right here at Fasthosts for as little as £1 per month for the first year, and if you’re looking for a complete solution designed specifically for businesses, you can choose our Exchange Email package for advanced email marketing tools.

4. Make it easy to subscribe with sign-up forms

Once you're set up with a professional email address, you’ll need to make sure it's super easy for people to subscribe to your email mailing list. Doing this is a relatively simple task, especially if you used a website builder. All you need to do is add a call to action (CTA) at the base of your pages.

To maximise your chances of getting more email sign-ups, you could add sign-up forms to all pages on your website. As long as these forms aren’t too large and distracting, they will provide a clear place for customers to sign up without impacting user experience. Just make sure all website features are responsive – this means they can adjust to the dimensions of various devices, including personal computers, mobile phones, and tablets. This ensures your website is functional and professional-looking for both mobile and desktop users.

Don’t forget to add a strong CTA to each of these sign-up forms. To encourage users to convert, they need a reason to give up their personal details, such as getting access to the latest business updates or exclusive content for subscribers.

5. Get their attention with pop-ups

Other ways to add CTAs include the use of pop-ups or slide-on windows with a subscription message. You can use them to alert visitors of your newsletter, offers and more. They can work quite well, provided they’re not too intrusive on the user’s screen – make sure they're not too big on smaller screens like mobiles and tablets, as explained above. Overall, pop-ups have a conversion rate of 3%, but smart pop-ups, which are tailored to specific audiences, can reach conversion rates of over 9%. 

Pop-ups are windows that appear in front of your website’s content while users are browsing, delivering extra information or targeted offers. These pop-ups can be scheduled to appear at specific times, such as exit-intent pop-ups that appear when the user moves their mouse to the top of the browser or off the page. These pop-ups can entice users who are about to leave by offering targeted incentives like product discounts. You can also schedule pop-ups for when visitors first arrive – offering new customer discounts – or when they scroll to a certain point on the page, as this could indicate engagement with a particular product type. This provides an opportunity to offer targeted discounts or encourage sign-ups to get the latest updates on a specific product line.

When designing, coding and scheduling pop-ups, make sure you use full-screen pop-ups sparingly. Most of the time, you want pop-ups to be eye-catching but not disruptive, as you may risk annoying customers if you interrupt their browsing too much. Only use full-screen pop-ups for really exciting news or offers, such as steep discounts or early access to a big sale.

6. Offer subscribers something in return with lead magnets

You can increase the effectiveness of your CTAs even more with the addition of lead magnets. Lead magnets are simple things, like an eBook of tips or a guide to beginner workout routines. The subscriber would then receive it for free upon signing up.

You can increase the effectiveness of your CTAs even more with the addition of lead magnets. Lead magnets are simple things, like an eBook of tips or a guide to beginner workout routines. The subscriber would then receive it for free upon signing up.

We would recommend adding lead magnets to your pop-ups and your email sign-up forms across your website to boost conversion rates. With the threat of scams and data theft on their minds, customers are increasingly nervous about giving up their personal information online. To convince them to trust you, you need a professional-looking site and plenty of incentives to get them on board.

7. Add CTAs and sign-up forms to your checkout page

Remember that the customer’s journey doesn’t end when they complete their first purchase. In addition to securing new customers, your aim should be to develop customer loyalty and ensure repeat business. To do this, make sure you utilise your checkout page as an email marketing opportunity by encouraging new customers to create accounts and sign up to mailing lists. 

All you need to do is add an extra field or section to the checkout form to give customers an option to sign up to your email newsletter. To encourage them to sign up, remember to offer incentives like early access to sales, regular updates, exclusive content, and notifications of discounts. Always make it clear what your mailing list is for and what kinds of communications users can opt in for. This transparency is essential for GDPR compliance.

8. Create personalised landing pages 

As we’ve established, marketing efforts work best when they’re targeted to a specific audience. With this in mind, a great strategy for expanding your mailing list is to build personalised landing pages for customers who discover your business from different places, such as those who come via Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and so on. Take a look at your biggest traffic sources and think about what these different types of customers might be looking for. Then, you can create separate landing pages tailored to these different audiences, allowing you to customise your email sign-up CTAs and lead magnets to appeal to different users.

9. Add sign-up buttons to your social media pages

Ensure your social media marketing and email marketing efforts are aligned by adding email sign-up buttons to your social media pages. Many major social media platforms support forms and buttons, which you can use to add email sign-ups and highlight them on your pages. 

10. Collect email addresses in person

As well as aligning your social media marketing and email marketing efforts, you can also link the mailing list-building process to your in-person marketing events. For example, if you’re attending an in-person marketing or networking event in your industry, you can promote your email newsletter and encourage people to sign up by filling out a physical form. The benefit of this is that you also have a better opportunity to build a rapport with these people and link your mailing list to their personal wants and needs, increasing the likelihood of enthusiastic sign-ups.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can also collect email addresses in person here. When a customer makes a purchase, encourage them to sign up to your mailing list at the till. Again, you’ll have a better chance of appealing to the individual customer and encouraging them to sign up in person.

How to create an email mailing list in Excel

Once you’re collecting email addresses for your mailing list, you’ll need a way to organise them so you can send the right communications at the right time. The easiest way to do this is with an email marketing service like MailChimp, which enables you to organise different categories of subscribers, create email newsletters with handy templates, schedule email campaigns, and send automated emails for specific scenarios (e.g., abandoned cart emails, new customer emails). 

However, if you’re a relatively small or local business, you may not be able to afford an email marketing tool yet. In the meantime, you can make the organisation of your mailing list easier using a spreadsheet tool like Excel.

Excel is a brilliant tool to use when organising your email list. By filling out the spreadsheet in a logical manner, you can easily copy and paste the email addresses you want to use into the appropriate email. It’s especially good if you only have a small list to begin with.

To make things easier if you have a larger list, you can import email addresses from your email service provider and use header values like ‘Email’, ‘Email Address’, ‘Name’, ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ to organise a table. Use a CSV, HTML or text file format to export and import this data easily – all you’ll need to do is click on ‘File’, ‘Import’, ‘Choose a File’ (and then select the downloaded file), and ‘Get Data’ to import your mailing list into Excel. You can then customise your formatting options before clicking ‘Finish’. 

How to create a mailing list in Outlook

Although we would recommend setting up professional Exchange Email Hosting rather than using a generic Outlook account for your business email, you can set up your mailing list via Outlook if you’re just starting out. To send emails to all of your subscribers, set up a contact group in your Outlook account. To do this:

  • Head to the navigation bar
  • Click on ‘People’
  • Click on ‘Home’ and then ‘New Contact Group’
  • Type in a name for your group
  • Select ‘Add Members’ to add addresses from your Address Book or Outlook Contacts, or you can choose to add new email contacts
  • Click ‘Save’

Finally, to send a group email, just click ‘Home’, ‘New Email’ and ‘To’. Type the name of your contact group in the search bar and double-click it to add it to the ‘To’ box.

How to create a mailing list in Gmail 

Setting up a mailing list in Gmail is also very straightforward:

  • Go to contacts.google.com
  • Choose the contacts you want to add to your mailing list
  • Click on the label icon and select 'Create label'
  • Type a name for your mailing list and select 'Save'

To send an email to your new mailing list, click on ‘Compose email’ and type the name of your contact group in the BCC field – this will prevent people in the mailing list from seeing all of the other emails in the list, which is crucial for data privacy.

How to maintain an email mailing list

Once your email list is set up, you’ll need to maintain and reorganise it fairly regularly. Email segmentation is the perfect way to organise your email mailing lists, allowing you to divide them into demographics, search preferences, purchase history, and more.

You should also keep an eye on open rates, allowing you to see which emails are preferred by which subscribers, and which subscribers may have stopped using your services altogether. You can use this to add value to your emails with further lead magnets, updates, newsletters, and offers, as well as send out re-engagement emails to subscribers who haven’t used your website in a long time. Doing this is often far more successful than trying to get new subscribers on board.

How to send a marketing email

So, now you know how to create a mailing list, the next and final part is learning how to send a marketing email. Understanding the in-depth process of how to send a marketing email could form an entire topic of its own, so we’ll leave you with a few tips to get started.

1. Understand your target audience

You should already have a basic idea of this if you segmented your emails appropriately, but you should also make sure that your email content resonates with your target audience – understand their needs and wants. 

In addition to performing in-depth market research, you could send out an email to your mailing list with a survey for gathering customer data, feedback, opinions and suggestions. To encourage people to complete this customer survey, you could offer incentives like discounts or a chance to win a valuable prize. 

2. Create content that is valuable to subscribers

Make sure what you're sending out is actually valuable to your audience and that you come across as authentic. Authenticity and relevance are more important than ever, so make sure you stand out from the crowd.

Again, sending out a customer survey could be a great way to gather insights on what your audience values. For example, if your audience values in-depth newsletters offering unique insights into the industry, you could direct resources towards this project. By targeting what they really want, you can improve click-through rates and conversions.

3. Personalise whenever possible

Although you certainly won’t have time to write unique emails for each customer, it’s best to avoid sending totally generic emails that don’t target your customers at all. For example, you should automatically fill in customers' names to make each customer feel more valued and connected. Sending out personalised news and product recommendations based on a customer’s purchase history is an excellent way to increase email engagement – proper segmentation of your mailing list will help you do this.

4. Use clear, actionable language

To keep readers engaged, it’s best to use clear, concise language with an action-driven focus, like ‘download this guide’ or ‘buy now to get 20% off’. This will let users know exactly what they can do with the information you give them.

5. Use FOMO

No one likes missing out on a great deal, so leverage this FOMO by creating a sense of urgency in your email marketing campaigns. For example, send out additional emails on the last day of sales to create a final push for conversions. Make sure you highlight the limited time available for sales and discounts in email headers (e.g., ‘last chance to get 30% off’ or ‘only 24 hours left in our summer sale’) to boost sales.

Now you should be more than ready to build your own email mailing list! If you need help with your email hosting package or anything else, don't hesitate to get in touch with our expert sales team.